What People Want to Know
Kate Trgovac
Manager, Web Evolution
Petro-Canada
Toronto
Squidoo: How did you decide what to make your lenses about?
Kate: Back in October, I needed to get a new laptop bag. But I didn't want a standard black, nylon, silver-zippered one. I did some research online, and it took me a fair bit of time. When I told my co-workers about it (most of whom are women and are likely to be in the market for a chic and funky laptop bag), they were very interested. So I posted the research from my search on my blog. Over the next two months it became one of my more popular posts. About 15% of my traffic comes from laptop bag search terms, most of which use at least one of "chic," "funky" or "cool" as an additional term.
I had been looking for a good topic for a lens. I have a vanity lens, but I wasn't really doing a lot with it. So, based on all the traffic that was coming to that one post -- as well as on the comments people had left on my post -- I realized that "Funky, Chic and Cool Laptop Bags" would likely make a great lens.
I've also started a companion lens to the laptop bag one. It's focused on reviews from real people of their actual laptop bag use. I don't think it's public yet, but hopefully in the next month or so. I'm in the process of collecting content for its debut.
S: What have you done with your lenses that you can't do elsewhere?
K: Well, my blog is mainly about technology, marketing, social media and other random topics that fit in there somewhere. It's a bit all over the place. My Squidoo lens really lets me focus on a specific topic. Particularly one where the content might not need to be updated every day (like on my blog) but maybe only every week or two. My blog is way less focused and much more frequently updated. I consider it a different type of content than my Squidoo lens.
I also like the module tools. I use Typepad for my blog, which I love, but the tools on Squidoo are even more focused. That focus (constraint) helps Squidoo users in the long term -- they're already familiar with the various modules, so when they're looking for information across a variety of topics they will already be comfortable with the structure in which that information is contained. It reduces search and learning-curve time.
S: Have you taken any cues from other lenses so far?
K: Most of my favorite lenses are ones that are a combination of annotated links and embedded content. The annotated links are great because they act as an editorial filter. It reduces my searching time and gets me to answers much faster than just using a search engine.
The embedded content is something I'm starting to see more and more of as well as starting to try to figure out how to do more of in my lens. For example, if you're writing a lens on Elvis and you know that one of the most popular questions about Elvis is "What were Elvis' top 10 hit songs," include a list of those embedded in your lens rather than a link to a page that has a list of those songs. I just have to figure out how to do that for laptop bags.
S: What advice or ideas would you offer other lensmasters?
K: Take the opportunity to create a Squidoo lens on something that is totally unrelated to your primary blog or web site. I was originally going to create a lens on online marketing. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't. The laptop bag lens is a different type of challenge, and I've found that it really lends itself to the Squidoo format.
